


A Northern Hymn

by Finfangillian



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher, Unforgiving: A Northern Hymn
Genre: Canon divergence from Northern Hymn, I don't know if I'll add actual romance but they will def become like. Friends at least, Other, Several characters are mentioned, Slightly ooc Morgan?, There's a lot of monsters, slowish burn, we'll see
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2019-07-08 07:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15925598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finfangillian/pseuds/Finfangillian
Summary: A crossover between the Dresden Files and the (awesome) game Unforgiving: A Northern Hymn.They woke up in the middle of no where in Sweden, already being hunted by all sorts of unfriendly beasts. But all they have to do to get home is steal a harp. Totally easy, right?Nope.





	1. Chapter 1: Harry

I couldn’t decide if it was easier, or more difficult to be afraid of Morgan now that I’d seen him scared. He was still the unstoppable force that was Warden Morgan, but he was a lot more volatile, less confident but somehow still entirely sure of his actions. He seemed almost fragile, yet at the same time surrounded by an invisible and unbreakable stone wall. It was annoying. 

“What was that thing?” I asked. I had a couple guesses about the naked, unnaturally quick, antler bearing monster that had just chased us through the woods somewhere In Sweden, but I wanted to be sure. 

“A demon,” Morgan replied. His voice was barely audible, and he was almost as pale as Thomas. 

“That didn’t look like any demon I’ve ever seen.” 

“Beasts straight out of Swedish Folklore don't tend to take up residence in Chicago.” Morgan slid down the wall of the frigid mine shaft we had run into and sat on the ground, which I could only assume was also really damn cold. 

“Oh, joy,” I grumbled as I sank down next to him. “So how do we deal with it?”

“I.. am not sure.” He was quiet for almost a solid minute, just staring at the ground in front of him. For one joyous second I almost thought he was dead, but then I remembered I didn’t know how to deal with this by myself. 

“Morgan,” I prodded, nudging him with my elbow, “anybody home?” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. 

“We may need to find Freya’s harp.” 

I knew what that was. A magic harp for which Freya plucked six strands of her golden hair to make strings. It was a beautiful instrument of terrible power, it made the most beautiful music you’d ever heard, and there were some pretty nasty legends about it. Or rather, the stuff around it. 

“The demon out there…” Morgan began, but he trailed off. He hadn’t moved since he sat down, his chest barely even rose when he breathed. His face was completely emotionless, but his eyes still displayed pure terror. “My mother told me stories about it when I was young.” That didn’t surprise me, it wasn’t uncommon for parents to tell their children scary stories to keep them from doing stupid stuff. 

“To scare you into behaving?” 

He shook his head. “To keep me safe.” His voice was still quiet, unsettlingly so. “I never completely believed this one.. ‘Til now, that is.”

“Really? You’re a Pagan and you-”

“I knew the harp existed. I just... Didn’t think that thing did.” He paused for a second. “Or I suppose I just really hoped it didn’t.” I couldn’t fault him for hoping that monstrosity wasn’t real, it scared the bejesus out of me too. 

“Well, sucks to be us I guess. Do you know where we can find the harp?” I think that came out a little more hostile than I intended, but I didn’t really care. 

“I think we have to get past the troll.”

I hate trolls. 

“Let’s get to it then,” I said, standing back up. Morgan followed suit. It was then that I realised he was shaking. Not the cold sort of shaking, the sort of shaking you do when you’re terrified for your life. 

For a minute I almost forgot how bad he wanted to cut my head off. 

* * *  
As we made our way through the mine shaft, which looked dangerously close to caving in, Morgan filled me in on the parts of the story I was missing. Freya’s harp was no joke, and neither were the things currently out to kill us. I silently wished I had Bob and Michael with me.

“So why are they after us? We don’t have the harp.” The way Morgan looked at me made me feel like the question had a stupidly obvious answer, but the things Morgan considered obvious were probably different from the things I considered obvious. 

“The troll is hungry, and the demon is angry.” He paused for a second and adjusted his cloak. “Probably because something- or someone- else took the harp.”

“Okay… But what about the violin guy?” Morgan didn’t answer right away. He took a second to look confused first.

“What violin guy?” 

The decrepit mine shaft seemed to grow ten degrees colder when he said that, but maybe it was just me. For the first time I wished I was a Warden, Morgan’s cloak looked a hell of a lot warmer than my coat. 

“The one in the lake,” I said, wrapping my arms tightly around me. The smile on that thing’s face was still fresh in my mind. Hauntingly wide and full of unnaturally sharp teeth. 

“I didn’t see that one.” That got to me, it was the first of many times that I would hope I had been hallucinating. 

“Consider yourself lucky then,” I grumbled, shoving my next-to-numb hands into my pockets. The air seemed to be steadily growing colder, but it wasn’t affecting Morgan at all. He kept walking, his cloak billowing around his ankles, completely untouched by the cold. I swore at him in my head, more than I usually do. 

Morgan hadn’t so much as spared me a glance in the past five minutes, and his stoicism was not appreciated. 

“Can we stop and make a fire or something?” I piped up, my teeth were beginning to chatter. “I’m freezing, and I’m tired. And I’m hungry.” Judging by Morgan’s expression I either sounded whinier than I thought, or he was twice as irritable this evening. He stopped walking for a moment, slipping his coat off under his cloak and draping it around my shoulders in the most annoyed gentlemanly gesture I’d ever seen. 

There were a lot of differences between Morgan and I, one of which was he had about six times the muscle I did. His coat hung on my like silk on a skeleton, but goddamn it was warm. I pushed my arms in and decided I hated him for having a warmer coat than I did, among other things. My coat was still cooler, his lacked a badass mantle. 

“Thanks,” I muttered. Morgan grunted in response and kept walking. I never noticed the built in sheathe in his coat before, it was a little unsettling. 

“A little further. Then we can take a rest.” 

I grumbled unintelligibly in response.   
* * *  
It turns out Morgan hates trolls too. I guess we do have some things in common, besides the innate desire to not be brutally killed by a troll in a mine shaft in middle-of-nowhere Sweden. Who'da thunk it. 

I learned that he hates trolls when the forest’s resident troll chased us through the woods and into a mine shaft. We got about twenty feet into it before we realised the troll was trying to crawl inside to get us. It was dedicated, I’ll give it that.   
I will not however, give it my flesh. 

Fortunately we managed to outrun it, barely. It had grabbed onto Morgan’s coat as we ducked through a broken board on the wall, and I had to shed it. That was when I learned what it felt like to be a popsicle. I didn’t have time to wonder if Morgan was also as cold at me, and just not complaining about it because the troll smashed the broken board almost as soon as I’d gotten through the hole. 

Morgan managed to yank me out of the way before it could grab me. His coat was caught on one of the troll’s fingers, it’s jagged nail had torn right through it. Morgan looked almost in pain for a moment before he pulled me into an old elevator shaft with no visible elevator and jumped in. 

‘Why would Morgan do something so stupid?’ You may ask. I guess he would prefer to die via face-ground fusion, or the more popular name, pancakery, rather than being gnawed on by a troll that had already murdered his coat. 

Fortunately for us, the elevator was just a couple floors down. We landed on its roof, and for a second it made unsettling noises that made it sound like the cables were going to snap. I was both surprised and relieved when they didn’t. 

I located a ladder on the wall of the shaft and we made out ascent into a tunnel below the troll infested one. We ran down the tunnel until Morgan was satisfied that we were no longer underneath the troll, or close to it, if it so decided to claw its way down. 

“Okay,” I said, stopping where I stood. “We’re taking a break.” With that I fell gracelessly to the ground and leaned against the wall. 

Morgan gave me possibly the most annoyed look I’d ever seen and mumbled in German as he gathered whatever flammable objects he could find and put them in a little pile. I didn’t know very much modern German, and I knew next to no old German. He could have been telling me that he was going to kill me in my sleep and I wouldn’t have known. But to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was what he had said. Morgan doesn’t like me very much.

“I don’t speak Spanish,” I said as Morgan knelt down and lit the fire with a flint and steel. It didn’t quite make it to my brain that a Flint and steel was a bit of a weird thing to just carry around with you, but I was too busy trying to warm up by the fire to really care. 

Morgan sighed and sank down next to me. Well, about five feet away from me, but whatever. He grumbled something I didn’t hear all of, but what I did catch was ‘pain in the ass’.

“You’re a pain in the ass too, if it makes you feel any better.” Never let it be said that I am not the king of snark. Morgan gave me a glance out of the corner of his eye, evidently too tired to return my snark. Sometimes I swore there was actually a hurricane going on in his eyes, it was difficult not looking at them. They were possibly the coolest eyes I had ever seen, but if I accidentally soulgazed Morgan I have a feeling he’d kill me. 

He sighed and closed his eyes, resting his head against the earthen wall. He stayed like that, totally quiet. I couldn’t tell if he was awake or not. The only reason I could tell he was even alive was because his chest rose and fell as he breathed. 

“Y’think we’re gonna get out of here alive?” I asked after a couple minutes of silence. Morgan didn’t open his eyes, or turn his head towards me to answer. 

 

“I hope so,” he said, and then went back to his silence. 

I hadn’t expected much more out of him. Honestly I had expected a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. I was hoping he didn’t say no, I really didn’t want to die in here. 

“I don’t want to die in here,” I spoke up after another few minutes of silence. I heard my voice waver a little bit, and I quietly hoped that Morgan hadn't noticed. 

“Neither do I.” I glanced over at him. His eyes were still closed, his face was still expressionless, his arms were folded over his chest, and he was still shaking just the slightest bit. He couldn’t be cold anymore, not with his cloak wrapped around him, and the fire. I decided he was shaking because he was scared, and that meant we were both screwed. 

“I’m scared.” I offered, not entirely sure why I kept trying to force conversation if Morgan was just going to keep giving short, unhelpful answers. The silence felt oppressive, heavy, almost suffocating. The sounds the mine shaft made were making me uncomfortable. The wooden supports groaned at the weight they held, the compacted dirt fell away from itself and swirled around on the floor, I could even still hear the wind howling outside. 

At least I couldn’t hear the troll, which probably meant it hadn’t found a way to catch up with us, or it was stuck. Either would be good. 

“I know,” Morgan replied, his voice softer now than it had been this entire time. “I am too.” The second part caught me a little off guard. I knew he was afraid, I could see that pretty obviously. I just hadn’t expected him to admit that he was scared, especially to me. After all, why would you let an evil villainous malicious spiteful warlock monster beast know that you were vulnerable? I guess he’d decided to trust me.


	2. Chapter 2: Harry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow it only took me several months to finally finish this chapter. I have the rest of it planned out and I'm gonna try to update somewhat consistently for the rest of it. Enjoy !
> 
> (Also, gear up for next chapter it's a Morgan one)

We had been lost for 2 and a half days. Fortunately, we’d also completely lost the troll. That didn’t change the fact that I kept looking over my shoulder every couple minutes to make sure nothing was following us. 

Morgan had been a bit less silent since he told me he was scared, it made being stuck in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nasties a bit more bearable. He had actually put some effort into carrying on a conversation with me, and I’d learned a lot about him. Mostly just little things, like that he preferred savoury stuff to sweet, his favourite colour was green - I can’t say that surprised me - and he knew 37 different species of trees off the top of his head. I figured there must be a reason for that, but I didn’t ask. 

“We’re going to have to find somewhere to stop soon,” he mumbled, looking up at the sky. The sun was starting to go down, and we didn’t have to say it to agree that neither of us wanted to spend the night in the open.

“Think there’s another opening to the mine shafts nearby?” I said. Morgan had previously nixed sleeping in normal caves, for troll reasons. That was one thing I was willing to trust him on. 

“Maybe… we may need to backtrack a little bit, but if it comes down to backtracking or being eaten…” 

“It’s unanimous.” I hoped Morgan remembered the way we had come better than I did. The whole forest looked the same, no matter how much we walked. It was just a bunch of tall, dark trees and bushes that I could swear I saw tiny little eyes in sometimes. 

Aside from a few small rodents deciding to try to give us both heart attacks by launching themselves out of the brush at light speed, we were able to search in relative peace for a little while. Every so often Morgan would tear a piece of fabric from the bottom of his cloak and tie it to a tree branch. I guess he was counting on the naked horns lady being stupid if we got lost. I can’t imagine that he’d be willing to shred the hem of his cloak if he thought she was gonna be able to follow us with it. I hoped she was stupid too, and clumsy. Maybe if we were really lucky she would trip down an elevator shaft or into the river or something. 

It took a few hours before our peaceful scouring was interrupted by very unsettling, very faint and very distinct violin music. 

The second I heard it I thought I was just hearing things, my mind and these hellish woods were playing tricks on me. But then Morgan heard it too. 

“What… is that?” He murmured almost inaudibly and I couldn’t tell if he was asking me or himself. 

“The Violin guy,” I replied. I was torn between being happy that I hadn’t been having hallucinations, and terrified that what I had seen was real. I decided to look at the bright side for once. Maybe he was just trying to provide some ambiance. With all of his unnaturally sharp teeth… and grey skin… and ribcage I could play like a xylophone. 

“Scheisse.” Morgan said, “I had really hoped you were just seeing things,” he lamented as he turned towards the direction of the eerie music. 

Morgan didn’t speak for a long time. Or at least, what felt like a long time. He stood, totally rigid, staring in the direction that the music was coming from. It stayed consistent for a few moments, or minutes, I couldn’t be sure. Then almost suddenly, it seemed to get a lot closer. Not gradually, like it teleported 50 feet away from us. Morgan tensed even more, if that was possible and took a few steps back, away from the sound. 

“We should um… Let’s go.” He turned and grabbed my arm, pulling me in the opposite direction of the music as fast as he could without sprinting. In the few seconds I had seen his face before he started pulling me I got to see how pale he’d gone. He looked like he had just seen a bunch of demons mugging a ghost. 

I started walking of my own volition and caught up with his stride pretty easily. “Do you think it’s gonna follow us,” I mumbled. 

Morgan didn’t actually answer, he just gave me a look out of the corner of his eye, but I got the message. I certainly hope not, because I don’t know what to do if it does. 

Goody. 

From then on we walk-ran in silence, trying to listen to the music, see if it got any closer. Fortunately it seemed to stay where we left it. 

I had decided to stop looking over my shoulder, at least for now. This forest was a bad place, and I didn’t want to mistake it playing tricks on me for something actually following us. With the state both of us were in, we’d probably bolt at the slightest rustle of a bush, and I didn’t want to accidentally send us running into some big bad that we weren’t prepared for. Plus, Morgan had started frantically looking back every so often, so I figured we were set. I was hoping he could keep his critical reasoning abilities when he was panicking. 

* * *

It took a few hours, but we managed to put enough distance between us and the music that we could no longer hear it. Morgan decided we were at a respectable enough distance from Mr. Pointy Teeth and spoke.

“Now, we should probably find somewhere to spend the rest of the night.” 

“Well,” I looked around. There was not much in the surrounding area, besides more dark trees and brush. “We could climb a tree.” 

“Or, we could not do that.” I was a bit taken aback at first. While Morgan shooting down every fun idea was normal, but him displaying humour was probably one of the rarest occurrences on earth. “It would be more sensible to keep moving until we find somewhere sheltered.”

I nodded. As much as I didn’t like agreeing with him, I also didn’t want to die.

We kept walking in the same direction that we’d been going. Neither of us suggested backtracking to see if we had passed any shelter. It took a good while before we ran across anything resembling a safe place to hide.

“In here,” I said, hurrying to the mouth of the cave. It was kinda small, as far as cave mouths go. We’d both have to hunch over to go in. I hoped it wasn’t like that all the way in.

Morgan looked around, then at the opening of the cave. He didn’t move.

“Come on,” I repeated. He did not come on. “What are you waiting for.”

“Something’s not right about that,” he muttered and nodded towards the cave. I turned to look at it, and it looked like any normal cave in a hellish demon infested forest to me. “We shouldn’t go in there.” As annoying as this was, whatever weird sense Morgan had about the cave that had somehow glossed completely over me was putting him just as on edge if not more than the violin demon did. 

Unfortunately, our only options were possibly evil cave or definately evil outside. 

“Morgan, everything here is not right.” I reminded him. “We really don’t have many options and right now, cave that might be bad is a better option than out in the open with things that are definitely bad.” 

He wasn’t happy about it, that much was obvious from the look he gave me, but I guess he saw the logic because he followed me into the cave. He didn’t even grumble in spanish about it. 

When we got in there I felt it almost immediately. A sense of dread hit me like a brick wall and I felt an almost overwhelming urge to turn and leave. I wondered if that was what Morgan had felt standing outside, or if he had had something totally different. Either way I understood why he hadn’t wanted to come in here. All I could think was, we need to leave we need to leave we will die if we stay here and we need to leave now. I couldn’t even tell myself that I was wrong. I felt helpless, lost, terrified all in a single moment. I couldn’t even make myself turn to look at Morgan, although I imagine he probably had a similar reaction if he had been picking up those kind of vibes from outside. 

The feeling dulled after a few difficult steps in and I regained my ability to think rationally. I looked at Morgan, which in hindsight was probably a poor choice, because he looked like he had just watched everyone he ever loved die all at once. There was almost no emotion on his face, but his eyes were wide and he was horrified. 

I turned away from Morgan, hoping that he was just overreacting, and looked around the cave. It was enormous. It was like an entirely different forest inside of the mountain. It was kind of beautiful, in a way, but it was also one of the worst things that could have possibly happened. 

“Out of the frying pan, and into the fire,” Morgan muttered, almost so quiet I didn’t hear it.

“Was that... a Hobbit reference?” I asked. It was still kind of weird to hear him saying things that could be considered personality traits, or normal interests. As long as I’ve known him I’ve only really seen the all work no play overly violent side of him. I supposed I’d adjust to him being an actual human being eventually, but it is not this day. 

He smirked a little bit and nodded as we begun to slowly saunter into the woods. Fortunately there appeared to be a clear path through them, which should have been incredibly concerning, but at the time we were both too focused on just finding somewhere that would be even a little bit safe. 

As we progressed into the trees they got more and more dense, and the path grew narrower and narrower. I had no idea how this cave was even remotely bright. There didn’t appear to be any holes in the ceiling, and even if there was it was pitch black outside. The mouth of the cave was a ways back, and it barely provided any light to begin with, and I couldn’t see any other opening in the distance. 

“What the hell’s keeping this place light?” I mumbled. I didn’t expect Morgan to reply, I figured he was just as confused as I was. 

“Lyktgubbe,” he said. At first I thought Morgan was having a stroke, and I was going to be left here alone and have to find my way home by myself. He’s old, it was a reasonable assumption. 

“Are you dying?” I asked. When I looked at him he looked more at peace than he had this whole time, which to be fair wouldn't take much, but it still seemed significant. Especially with how opposed he had been to even entering the cave. He had a small smile on his face, and he was looking at the tree line. 

“Lyktgubbe. Or Irrbloss,” I just stared at him for a minute. “They’re little lights. They can be bastards but sometimes they’re helpful. They’re the ones that lead people into swamps. Sometimes they lead people out though.”

“Let’s hope these are some helpful ones then.” 

* * *

Morgan, fortunately, was not picky about the dirt that we rested on. He had stared pretty intently at the Lykt-bloss things as we made our way through the otherwise dark forest-cave. They gave us just enough light to see the well beaten path in front of us, but we couldn’t see anything too far ahead. It seemed like they were.. Following along beside us. I guess I couldn’t really complain, they were providing enough light to see the road, which was helpful.

It did take a little while of walking before we found a suitable spot to stop. Although, I think we would have both been ready to stop anywhere at that point. We were both pretty thoroughly exhausted. 

“Here looks decent,” Morgan muttered, gesturing to a fairly clear patch of ground just off the path. It didn’t look… Too suspicious, compared to everything else in this place. 

I nodded and followed him over to it. We could still see the road, a little bit, from down there. But Morgan was ever the paranoid bastard. He picked up a long stick from the ground and stuck it in the dirt next to the road. 

“What’s that for?” I grumbled as I sat down, my back against a tree. 

“So we can find the path if the Irrbloss leave.” He replied, sounding equally as tired and annoyed as I had. 

I had to admit, it was a decent plan. I certainly didn’t want to get lost in here, and the extra bit of security couldn’t hurt. We could barely see the road from where we sat even with the Lykt-bloss hanging around. 

Morgan settled in on the ground across from me, leaning against a tree. It didn’t even occur to us at the time to start a fire, but, then again, who knows what a fire would have caught the attention of? Even if we had thought of it, I get the feeling that Morgan wouldn’t have wanted to take that risk. 

He looked around briefly before crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m going to keep watch.”  
I took a second and wondered when Morgan had last slept. Probably never, I still wasn’t totally convinced he was actually human. 

“Wake me up after a few hours.” He looked reluctant, but I think he was probably too tired to argue. 

“Fine,” he muttered. Never let it be said that Morgan was subtle. 

I pulled my coat tighter around me and closed my eyes. Hopefully I would be able to actually sleep for a while before he woke me up, but either way, it was going to be a long night.


End file.
